How much does it hurt? New research puts a price on pain to improve measurement
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 2-Nov-2025 04:11 ET (2-Nov-2025 09:11 GMT/UTC)
Asking people how much money they would accept to experience pain again can provide a more accurate and comparable measure of pain levels than the familiar 1–10 scale, according to an international research team led by Lancaster University.
Published in the journal Social Science & Medicine , the study indicates that people’s theoretical willingness to accept money in exchange for enduring pain offers a more reliable way to measure discomfort than conventional ‘self-reported’ measures of pain levels such as number scales or visual charts.
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